Customer Reviews

Me About You/ To Be Free

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After decades of obscurity, Jackie DeShannon "To Be Free" masterwork containing nine superb original songs by the first great female Singer/Songwriter from the baby-boomer generation is finally released on Compact Disc and tremendous stellar release long overdue. "To Be Free" is a stunning achievement that should have been a huge success and came out shortly before "Tapestry" but sadly no promotion or airplay resulted in this mesmerizing collection going unnoticed except by connoisseurs of great artists and Jackie DeShannon is one of the finest the music world has to offer. Ms. DeShannon a totally awesome singer with numerous memorable & diverse chart-hits like "You Won't Forget Me", "Needles And Pins", "When You Walk In The Room", "She Don't Understand Him (Like I Do)", "I Can Make It With You", "A Lifetime Of Loneliness", "Come And Get Me", "The Weight" and other gems throughout the sixties yet also an accomplished songwriter but her shortsighted record company insisted on doing covers & with mega-hits such as the sixties anthem "What The World Needs Now Is Love" not too hard to understand this stance as this magnificent vocal is mesmerizing & incredible resulting in this timeless classic being honored with a Lifetime Grammy Salute in 2008. Yet right before the close of the great musical sixties another sixties and beyond chart-topping anthem being her own "Put A Little Love In Your Heart" came on strong and this timeless classic should have focused everyone on the arrival of the amazing "To Be Free" masterwork. Looking back hard to understand how this amazing collection slipped through the cracks but had Ms. DeShannon a super force behind her like a Lou Adler, clearly her career would have come out dramatically different as acclaim did not match such amazing output...aside from this unfortunate circumstance, "To Be Free" happened which led to other great works by this legendary lady in the 70's such as "Jackie", "Songs", "Your Baby Is A Lady" & the grossly overlooked "New Arrangement" which feature the original "Bette Davis Eyes" and other remarkable songs and memorable performances! "To Be Free" is an engrossing work and one to sit down with fine wine & give a close listen and follow the words...great songs, soulful vocals and terrific arrangements make for a wondrous musical journey to be enjoyed over and over...cover songs are stunning vocal performances like "Set Me Free/You Keep Me Hanging On" featuring a performance so raw & riveting it is hard to imagine how this missed massive FM airplay & Leonard Cohen's "Bird On A Wire" is definitive here with Jackie going deep inside turning this classic inside out...lovers of great singers will rate Jackie DeShannon one of the all-time greatest after experiencing these spectacular performances! "Me About You" is a fine collection of soulful songs that fill out another magnificent collection from this great artist who is the finest from her generation and beyond...Bravo Jackie!!!

Jackie DeShannon is a singer-songwriter whose songs generally overshadowed her singing. Her version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "What the World Needs Now is Love" etched her name on the upper reaches of the charts in 1965, and her own "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" notched a second commercial favorite in 1969. But other than these two worldwide hits, her albums and singles typically languished in the lower regions of the U.S. pop charts. Her albums for Imperial ranged from early teen-oriented pop to adult contemporary, and 1968's Me About You marked a step toward the latter. DeShannon mixed personal originals with delicate, intimately interpreted covers of songs from John Sebastian, Tim Hardin, Jimmy Webb and Van Dyke Parks. The arrangements (by Jack Nitzsche, Nick De Caro, Kirby Johnson and Arthur Wright) are inventive and moving, but the West Coast production occasionally leaves DeShannon's voice sticking out from the instrumentation.

Even as DeShannon found a more sophisticated sound, her lyrics often looked back, as on the original "Splendor in the Grass," and her choice of pop covers, such as the Lovin' Spoonful's "Didn't Want to Have to Do It" and the Turtles' "Me About You," tied in to her earlier period of songwriting and hit making. What's really interesting, though, is how DeShannon contemporized this material, and how her growing maturity led to the bigger reach of 1969's Laurel Canyon and Put a Little Love in Your Heart (each available separately), and this disc's second feature, 1970's To Be Free, her last for Imperial. To Be Free was the album that followed the massive success of "Put a Little Love in Your Heart," and it used the same production team. The songs, however, are mostly DeShannon's, and the arrangements largely by Rene Hall. Hall's work with Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles, and backing vocals by Vanetta Fields (Ikettes) and Clydie King (Raelettes) are the foundation of the album's soul-meets-adult-contemporary sound.

The album opens with the funky bass, sharp horns and sweet strings of "Livin' on the Easy Side," and the sly "It's So Nice" is sung like an early Prince song. The introspective and observational lyrics anticipate the singer-songwriter breakthrough of 1971's Tapestry, though the slick production hasn't the earthiness delivered by Lou Adler for Carole King. DeShannon's eight originals are complemented by a medley of the Supremes "You Keep Me Hangin' On" and Little Anthony and the Imperials' "Hurt So Bad," and there's a deeply felt, gospel-flavored cover of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire." The album's single, "Brighton Hill" reached #10 on the adult contemporary chart with its warm lyric of satisfaction. This two-fer CD's lone bonus is an over-orchestrated cover of Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe" that won't make you forget Rod Stewart's 1971 hit (nor Hardin's 1965 original); but it's largely superfluous amid these two fine albums. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]